Coconut irrigation water saving as a function of areas of the concentration of the root system and soil cover

Abstract

The Brazilian production of coconut has not been sufficient to attend the internal market demand which has resulted in great importations of dry and semi industrialized coconut (IBGE, 2006). The northeast of Brazil has the greatest coconut production and is, at the same time, characterized for its high evapotranspiration demand and the lowest precipitation, therefore, it is necessary to optimize the irrigation water used. During the development phase of the coconut tree, most of the root system concentrates around 1m of radius, and in the adult phase, in larger part, to a radius up to 2m. The traditional procedure of calculation of the water volume to be applied through irrigation, normally considers the area given by the crop planting spacing and a canopy cover coefficient. This results in great volumes of water applied unnecessarily. To save water, this study investigates the calculation of the volume of irrigation water considering the areas where larger concentration of the root system occurs. For the first year of development of the coconut tree, four areas of irrigation delimited by rings of zinc with diameters of 0.7 m, 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0 m were used to irrigate the portion with the larger concentration of the root system, and two conditions of soil covering (covered and bare soil), plus a control (4 x 2 + 1), resulting in nine treatments with three repetitions, totaling 27 plots. The procedure proposed in this research for the calculation of the water volume to be applied in the coconut crop, based on areas of larger concentration of the root system, promoted considerable economy of water, in relation to the procedure traditionally used. The isolation of the soil surface in order to avoid the evaporation contributed to a substantial reduction of the applied volume of water as well.